


Lo, the day is coming to an end

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Angst, Conversations, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Female Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 12:15:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10876593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: It was impossible to accept she would not return.





	Lo, the day is coming to an end

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sagiow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagiow/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Long Day's Journey Into Night](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10868760) by [sagiow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagiow/pseuds/sagiow). 



“I’m sorry, I’ll only be a moment,” Emma said, trying to collect herself and failing. The men wouldn’t care—she was still the loveliest sight at Mansion House and Henry had often thought that simply seeing her, that coaxing smile she’d use for the weakest boys, her neat waist and the grace of her hands at work, how she moved among the beds as if she continued to wear the forbidden hoop beneath her skirts, might be what kept a solider, Dixie or Yankee, from dying. Her face was flushed and her eyes reddened from weeping, the tears wet on her cheeks, making her long lashes a tangle. He reached out a hand and stroked at the tearstains, not as if he would make them disappear.

“What is it, what troubles you so?” he asked, suspecting he knew and that she needed to say it. To choose the words to make it real.

“I can’t believe it’s true,” she replied, one hand clutching her skirt, wrinkling the cloth in a way he imagined she would not have allowed herself when she was a belle and not a nurse, a girl to be courted and not a woman who held a man’s hand as he cried for his mother. He waited.

“I miss her, I want her to come back,” she added. “I never,” she broke off, choking a little, dropping her head so her slender neck was revealed. He moved without thinking, without permission and took her in his arms. He felt her press her cheek against his vest and how her hands hung at her sides. He had a fleeting thought of Jed Foster and how utterly bereft the man had seemed when he returned, how restless he was, his gaze uneasy and strangely hopeful, as if Nurse Mary might reappear around a corner or emerge from a doorway. He’d seen how Jed had pressed his lips together, holding back words or cries and he remembered how the man had not been able to keep from smiling whenever he’d seen Mary, even if he disguised his reaction in a smirk or a jeer. Henry felt Emma’s hitching breath and the warmth of her flesh against his, the scent of violets, and he held her closer, more softly but more firmly.

“Never what, Emma?” he whispered. She drew back just enough so he could see her eyes, the curve of her upper lip.

“I never said goodbye. She was my dearest friend and I never said goodbye to her,” Emma said. They would all mourn Mary so greatly but in so many different ways—Jed the wife he had never been able to marry, Henry the second sister he had found to work beside, Anne the rival who honed her skills, Hale the Baroness he had sought to put on a pedestal. Emma had lost the friend whose gentle guidance was mingled with inspiration and a set of standards that Emma found suited her better than any others. What Mary had been to Samuel, Henry would not hazard to guess, except that she had his true admiration and that her death had made him seem old, nearly as old as it made Jed young and lost.

“She knew, she would know how you felt. She always did. She wouldn’t want you to berate yourself,” he replied, the vision of Mary nodding at his shoulder so vivid he almost turned to see her.

“I berate myself! She would not have treated me thus, she would have fought and she would have found a way. She would have said something, she would not have let me go in such a state, without any comfort, with a stranger,” Emma exclaimed. Henry could not help agreeing with her within himself, not for Emma alone, but for all of them. They had all let her go and now she was gone where they could not follow. The Mary in his vision shook her head, her pretty mouth downturned in a frown.

“Perhaps. She was a fine woman and more persistent than any man I’ve ever met. But she knew that every boy could not be saved, that the trying was what mattered. She knew you cared, how you cared for her. Even as ill as she was,” Henry replied, knowing he was right as he spoke from the sense of wholeness within and the way Emma’s blue eyes became clear though still so very dark.

“He would not have let her suffer, Dr. Foster. Whatever it cost him at the last, he would have saved her that, don’t you think?” Emma said. They would never know but Henry felt she was right, that with her friend’s death, Emma had taken on Mary’s mantle, her insight and convictions, the most modest, womanly gravity, without losing anything of her own.

“Yes, he would have done everything for her,” Henry said. 

“No, anything. He would have done anything,” Emma corrected and then Henry could only pull her towards him and press his bowed forehead against the crown of her head, a tremor from the fearful grief of losing his beloved that he knew overwhelmed Jed running through him.

“Oh, Mary! How we will miss you!” Emma murmured. It had the shape of a prayer in her mouth, the invocation to a tender Lord, the devotion the nuns had for their own Mary. It was blasphemy but it was the truth and he grieved that Mary was not there to say so, one eyebrow delicately quirked, her lips solemn and her eyes alight.

**Author's Note:**

> Sagiow posted on her Chapter 3 notes that she hoped someone would write a precursor scene for Emma and Henry. I felt I must make the attempt...
> 
> The title is from Judges 19:9


End file.
